1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of information handling systems, and more particularly to remotely controlling power to an information handling system.
2. Description of the Related Art
As the value and use of information continues to increase, individuals and businesses seek additional ways to process and store information. One option available to users is information handling systems. An information handling system generally processes, compiles, stores, and/or communicates information or data for business, personal, or other purposes thereby allowing users to take advantage of the value of the information. Because technology and information handling needs and requirements vary between different users or applications, information handling systems may also vary regarding what information is handled, how the information is handled, how much information is processed, stored, or communicated, and how quickly and efficiently the information may be processed, stored, or communicated. The variations in information handling systems allow for information handling systems to be general or configured for a specific user or specific use such as financial transaction processing, airline reservations, enterprise data storage, or global communications. In addition, information handling systems may include a variety of hardware and software components that may be configured to process, store, and communicate information and may include one or more computer systems, data storage systems, and networking systems.
One example of an information handling system is a server blade. A server blade is a server on a card. The card includes a single motherboard that contains a full computer system, including a processor(s), memory, network connections, and associated electronics. Most server blades include some level of local disk storage with provisions to access external storage. Each server blade runs its own instance of the operating system; consequently, administrators can designate individual blades for different applications or end users and can insert or remove (hot plug) the server blades without affecting the operation of other server blades. Multiple server blades plug into the midplane of a chassis, or enclosure, that provides shared, redundant infrastructure components such as power, cooling, networking, and cabling.
Known server blade platforms provide the ability for remote chassis administration via a single management card that communicates to each of the blades in a chassis (e.g., an Embedded Server Management card). Among many of the remote management capabilities that the ESM card provides is the ability to power down a server blade. The server blade may also be powered down by actuating a power button 125 on the server blade. The ESM card powers down a server blade by sending a command to a super SIO (SIO) controller 110 on the server blade. The SIO controller controls whether power from the power supply 120 is applied to the server blade or not. However, simply removing power to the server blade by the SIO controller 110 remotely may introduce data corruption issues if the ESM card instructs the SIO controller 110 to remove power while an operating system is running. (See, e.g., FIG. 1, labeled Prior Art.)